Regulatory Effects of the Uty/Ddx3y Locus on Neighboring Chromosome Y Genes and Autosomal Mrna Transcripts in Adult Mouse Non-Reproductive Cells
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bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.30.180232; this version posted July 1, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Regulatory effects of the Uty/Ddx3y locus on neighboring chromosome Y genes and autosomal mRNA transcripts in adult mouse non-reproductive cells Christian F. Deschepper Cardiovascular Biology Research Unit, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM) and Université de Montréal Address : 100 Pine Ave West Montréal (QC) Canada H2W 1R7 E-mail : [email protected] Phone : 514 987 5759 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.30.180232; this version posted July 1, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 2 ABSTRACT In addition to sperm-related genes, the male-specific chromosome Y (chrY) contains a class of ubiquitously expressed and evolutionary conserved dosage-sensitive regulator genes that include the neighboring Uty, Ddx3y and (in mice) Eif2s3y genes. However, no study to date has investigated the functional impact of targeted mutations of any of these genes within adult non-reproductive somatic cells. We thus compared adult male mice carrying a gene trap within their Uty gene (UtyGT) to their wild-type (WT) isogenic controls, and performed deep sequencing of RNA and genome-wide profiling of chromatin features in extracts from either cardiac tissue, cardiomyocyte-specific nuclei or purified cardiomyocytes. The apparent impact of UtyGT on gene transcription concentrated mostly on chrY genes surrounding the locus of insertion, i.e. Uty, Ddx3y, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) contained within their introns and Eif2s3y, in addition to possible effects on the autosomal Malat1 lncRNA. Notwithstanding, UtyGT also caused coordinate changes in the abundance of hundreds of mRNA transcripts related to coherent cell functions, including RNA processing and translation. The results altogether indicated that tightly co-regulated chrY genes had nonetheless more widespread effects on the autosomal transcriptome in adult somatic cells, most likely due to mechanisms other than just transcriptional regulation of corresponding protein-coding genes. INTRODUCTION Although the contributions of genes on the male sex chrY have long believed to be restricted to their effects on reproductive functions in sex organs, increasing evidence indicates that their impact may in fact extend to somatic cells as well. Thus, several types of genetic rodent models have shown that chrY and/or some of its genetic variants affect a range of phenotypes within the cardiovascular, immune, metabolic or neurologic systems1,2,3,4,5. In humans, one specific haplotype of the male-specific portion of chrY (MSY) associates with increased coronary artery disease risk, along with altered gene expression within macrophages6, while mosaic loss of chrY in blood cells (a relatively frequent and age-related event) associates with a host of disease manifestations, including shorter survival, increased cancer risk, cardiovascular events, Alzheimer disease and age-related macular degeneration7,8,9,10. In addition of the male sex-determination Sry gene, MSY carries only a handful of protein-coding genes, which fall for the most part in two classes. The first one corresponds to genes expressed only in male reproductive tissues and/or specializing in sperm-related functions11,12. Genes within the second class share a particular set of properties, as they: i) are expressed ubiquitously in all tissues; ii) are X-degenerate genes that have on chromosome X (chrX) counterparts that escape chrX-inactivation in females; iii) exert bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.30.180232; this version posted July 1, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 3 their effects in a dose-related fashion that depends on expression of copies from both sex chromosomes; and iv) belong to an evolutionary conserved core of genes found in MSY from all placental vertebrates12. Although there are some species-specific variation concerning the exact nature of genes found in that shared core group, some of them (including Uty, Ddx3y and Kdm5d) are common to all investigated species12. In addition to the above properties, the X-degenerate genes on MSY have functional annotations that relate mostly to some of the most basic cell functions (such as chromatin modification, ubiquitination, translation, splicing and chromatin modification). To date, there is evidence (albeit limited) that X- degenerate genes on MSY show at least some level functional redundancy with their homologs on chrX. For instance, DDX3Y has been shown to be functionally interchangeable with DDX3X in cultured mammalian cells13,14. Likewise, studies using mice with inactivating gene traps of either Utx or Uty demonstrated that Uty showed high level of functional redundancy with Utx during development, with further tests showing that the effects of both genes were independent of any lysine demethylase activity15. In humans, overexpressed UTY has been shown to rescue preleukemic phenotypes induced by UTX deficiency, also in a manner that was independent of any lysine demethylase activity16. However, there is still no study to date exploring whether targeted mutations of MSY genes do have an impact on somatic non-reproductive cells in adult organisms. To address this particular question, we used male mice carrying an inactivating gene trap within the fourth intron of Uty (UtyGT in short). These mice were previously shown to be fully viable15, but not used for studying phenotypes other than those occurring during the developmental stage. In particular, we performed deep sequencing of RNA (RNA-Seq) in hearts and cardiomyocytes from either adult YUtyGT mice or their isogenic wild-type (WT) controls. The results were compared to those obtained with either a chromatin immunoprecipitation and sequencing (ChIP- Seq) assay of Histone H3 acetyl lysine-27 (H3K27ac) residues (i.e. marks of active enhancers) or with assays for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (ATAC-Seq), which quantifies chromatin accessibility across the genome. We found that despite significant effects on hundreds of mRNA transcripts in cardiac cells, the genomic regulatory effects UtyGT were much more restricted, as they concentrated mostly on genomic regions on MSY. The data suggested that while the transcriptional effects of the Uty locus were restricted to a handful of regulators, the latter could nonetheless further regulate the transcriptomic profile of cells, presumably via post-transcriptional or post-translational mechanisms. bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.30.180232; this version posted July 1, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 4 RESULTS Regulatory effects of UtyGT on surrounding MSY genes and genomic sequences: Combined analysis of the results of RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq and ATAC-Seq demonstrated that the greatest impact of UtyGT was observed on either the abundance of transcripts from surrounding genes or chromatin marks in corresponding genomic regulatory regions. RNA-Seq revealed that Ddx3y and Eif2s3y were among the top most affected genes, either in terms of statistical significance or absolute fold change (Table 1). Ddx3y was the gene whose expression was (after Uty itself) affected most significantly, with its abundance in either hearts or cardiomyocytes from UtyGT being about 15% of that in their WT counterparts (Table 1). Eif2s3y was among the 60 most affected genes but its expression was (contrary to Ddx3y) increased in hearts or cardiomyocytes from UtyGT mice. RT-qPCR experiments were performed to further validate those results. Since Uty, Ddx3y and Eif2s3y are all ubiquitously expressed MSY genes, non-cardiac tissues (including skeletal muscle, spleen, liver and/or primary lung fibroblasts) were included in the analysis. Regardless of the type of tissue, Ddx3y showed (similarly as detected by RNA-Seq) a greater than five-fold downregulation in samples from UtyGT mice (Fig. 1a). Likewise, Eif2s3y was upregulated in all tested tissues, the abundance of its mRNA transcripts in UtyGT tissues being about 150% of that found in their WT counterparts (Fig. 1b). In additional experiments, we verified whether UtyGT had any effect on expression of the chrX homologs of the above genes. Expression of Utx was unaffected and Ddx3x showed a slight increase of about 10 % (P < 0.05); expression of Eif2s3x was increased by about 40% (P < 0.01) (Supplementary Fig S1). To further test whether the impact of UtyGT could be found at the level of proteins as well, we took advantage of the fact that the protein sequences of mouse Ddx3x and Ddx3y show 92% identity with each other as well as with human DDX3X or DDX3Y, and used two distinct antibodies against human recombinant DDX3X for Western blot analyses. Data obtained with each antibody were pooled by normalizing all data by the average of the values obtained in material from females (Fig. 2). Left ventricles from male XYWT mice contained similar concentrations of overall Ddx3 immunoreactivity as that found in females; in contrast, the concentrations found in left ventricles from in male XYUtyGT mice was about 50% of that found in either male XYWT or female XX mice. Similar differences were observed in primary fibroblasts from male XYWT and XYUtyGT mice (Supplementary Fig S2). Altogether, the data indicated that the Ddx3y transcript was translated into a protein, and that its contribution to overall Ddx3 immunoreactivity was about equal as that of its chrX homolog Ddx3x. bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.30.180232; this version posted July 1, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder.